INFORMATION AND LIBRARY SERVICES

The UMUC Information and Library Services Newsletter

From Stephen Miller 
Associate Provost, Information and Library Services

Information and Library Services warmly welcomes all new and returning faculty, students and staff to the summer semester at UMUC. This issue of our online newsletter contains information on recent activities and developments at ILS, including changes to our electronic resources collection, new multimedia tutorials, conference participation and more.

Remember that ILS is available 24/7 for help and research assistance via chat and email. In-person and telephone assistance are available at our Adelphi location during regularly scheduled business hours. Instant messaging for quick library-related questions is available during selected hours from the Ask a Librarian page and through our subject guides. We also offer weekend walk-in and telephone research assistance at our office in the McKeldin library on the University of Maryland College Park campus.

Faculty -- Be sure to take advantage of the library's liaison program and course-related library instruction!

ILS is committed to providing you with the library resources and services you need. Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Best of luck for this summer!

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Electronic Resources News

1. Electronic Resources Changes Taking Effect July 1 for FY10

Information and Library Services (ILS) supports your research needs through our 135 databases and other electronic resources. As part of our collection management assessment for fiscal year 2010, ILS performed a careful review of UMUC's library electronic resources in light of current budget constraints. Factors taken into account included the number of times the resource was accessed in the previous fiscal year, whether similar content was available in another resource or on the Web, how instrumental a resource is in supporting the UMUC curriculum, whether the resource was full text and FindIt enabled, how often it was used by ILS librarians for instructional purposes, its cost and whether we found a lower cost equivalent substitute. Input was solicited from faculty throughout the university. In addition, ILS explored new resources that could be added or serve as substitutes to better support UMUC's programs. Below is the list of changes that will take effect July 1, 2009.

Substitutes (most provide better coverage and cost savings)

• Criminal Justice Periodicals Index (ProQuest) in place of Criminology: A SAGE Fulltext Collection (CSA/ProQuest)
• General Science Abstracts (EBSCO) in place of General Science Abstracts (OCLC)
• Political Science Complete (EBSCO) in place of Worldwide Political Science Abstracts (ProQuest)
• Public Affairs Index (EBSCO) in place of PAIS (ProQuest)
• Social Sciences Abstracts (EBSCO) in place of Social Sciences Abstracts (OCLC)

Upgrades (provide additional resources and coverage for additional support of core subjects)

• ABI/Inform Complete from ABI/Inform Global
• Academic Search Complete from Academic Search Premier
• Oxford Art Online from Grove Art Online (Oxford)

Adds

• ArchiveGrid
• ArticleFirst
• Arts and Humanities Citation Index
• CAMIO
• Clase and Periodica
• EIU Global Outlook
• Electronic Books
• Environment Complete (EBSCO): supports environmental science and related programs
• GPO Monthly Catalog
• History Resource Center – US
• OAIster 
• PapersFirst
• ProceedingsFirst
• Research Starters–Sociology
• SAGE eReference Collection: offers multidisciplinary reference collection (see below)
• World Almanac
• WorldCat Dissertations and Theses

Discontinuations

• Academic OneFile (Gale)
• BooksInPrint.com (Bowker)
• General OneFile (Gale)
• Humanities Abstracts (OCLC)
• Readers Guide (OCLC)
• Research Starters, Business and Education (Gale): limited time free trial in FY09
• Science Resource Center (Gale)
• WilsonSelect Plus (OCLC)

2. New Reference E-Books…Take a Look!

ILS is pleased to introduce an extensive selection of online subject encyclopedias and ready reference e-books, many of which are the same as the reference collections of major research universities.  These cover a wide range of disciplines from business to humanities to the sciences and social sciences.  Students and faculty can use these to get a quick overview of a subject before pursuing further research, get facts and statistics to support arguments and conclusions and support their research with authoritative information written by professionals in the field. Be sure to check out this excellent new addition to UMUC's library collections this July!

Sage eReference Collection
This collection consists of 120 award-winning and authoritative encyclopedias covering multiple disciplines.  It is noted for its easy to navigate user interface and its content, and was selected as a 2007 CHOICE outstanding academic title of the year and as a best reference resource in 2007 by Library Journal.

Disciplines covered include:

• Anthropology
• Business
• Criminal justice
• Health care
• Homeland security
• Journalism
• Legal studies
• Management
• Political science
• Psychology
• Sociology

Gale Virtual Reference Library
ILS has also significantly built on our existing Gale Virtual Reference Library collection of 23 literature-related titles by adding 56 titles from a wide variety of disciplines:

• Business
• Communications
• Criminal justice
• Education
• Environmental sciences
• Finance
• History
• Homeland security
• Literature
• Political science
• Psychology
• Sciences
• Sociology

3. New Factiva Interface

Based on customer feedback, Dow Jones has implemented a more streamlined interface to its Factiva database. Factiva is an excellent database for business research, and many other disciplines. Try it out!

4. RefWorks Enhancement – RefGrab-It

An updated version of RefGrab-It is now available in RefWorks. You can either download a bookmarklet or plug-in, either for Internet Explorer or Firefox. For more information about the new RefGrab-It, see Capturing Web Page Data With RefGrab-It, which explains how to download and set it up.
Please Note: You will need to delete your old RefGrab-It bookmarklet before downloading the new one. Note:  RefGrab-It is currently not functioning from off campus.  We are working to resolve this issue. 

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ILS Presents at Eastern Psychological Association Conference

Reference and Instruction Librarian Robert Miller, liaison to the School of Undergraduate Studies' Department of Social, Behavioral, Natural and Mathematical Sciences—of which psychology is a part—was an invited speaker at the 2009 Eastern Psychological Association conference, held March 5–8 in Pittsburgh. UMUC psychology professor Diane Finley, who coordinates the conference’s teaching section, asked Robert to present on his work with the psychology department. Robert’s talk, “InfoWise: Library Collaboration with Psychology Faculty and Students,” highlighted information literacy initiatives at UMUC, including:

• Classroom instruction
  UMUC librarians offer subject-specific research help and interact with students via active learning exercises in the online classroom
• Faculty workshops
  UMUC librarians collaborate with faculty to help integrate information literacy skills into the syllabus and improve the design of research assignments
• Involvement with student clubs
  UMUC librarians maintain a presence in selected online student clubs to offer research assistance and teach information literacy skills in an extra-curricular setting

Robert’s talk, which received excellent feedback from audience members, was moderated by Barbara Nodine of Arcadia University, a former president of the American Psychological Association's Division on Teaching in Psychology. Presenting at a conference of psychology educators offered the library a chance to showcase its information literacy program and its collaborative efforts to help teaching faculty ensure student success.

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ILS Rolls Out New, Quick Multimedia Tutorials

ILS is pleased to announce new multimedia tutorials created using the latest version of Adobe Captivate software. These short tutorials are designed to help users navigate library resources quickly and efficiently. New tutorial topics include:

• APA Citations
• Creating Effective Database Searches Using Boolean Operators
• Finding Full-Text Articles with Find It
• How to Read a Database Citation
• Using a Database Thesaurus

In addition to appearing on the library's "How Do I?" page, the tutorials will be inserted into Web Tycho library conferences. As always, we encourage comments and suggestions regarding the latest developments at ILS.

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Open Educational Resources Online Workshop

Information and Library Services, in conjunction with the Center for Teaching and Learning, offered the online workshop The World of Open Educational Resources: How to Find, Evaluate and Use OERs in Your Classes. The workshop, facilitated by 24/7 Services Coordinator Joe Rawson and Reference and Instruction Librarian Cynthia Thomes, was designed to acquaint participants with finding, evaluating and using educational materials—such as videos, audio clips, images, lecture notes, reading lists, course assignments, and lesson plans—freely available in repositories on the Internet. Topics covered in the workshop included copyright and accessibility of OER, advantages and disadvantages associated with their use in classes and methods to adapt OER for classroom use. Two iterations of the eight-day workshop were conducted.

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Google Universe Workshop to Be Offered in Summer Semester

Information and Library Services, in conjunction with the Center for Teaching and Learning, will once again offer the popular workshop, Google Universe: How to Make the Most of Your Students' Favorite Resource. The workshop, facilitated by Reference and Instruction Librarians and SUS library liaisons Ryan Shepard and Ed O'Donnell with the assistance of Advanced Technologies Librarian Kee-Young Moon, aims to teach faculty members the advantages and disadvantages of using Google as a tool for academic research. Topics covered in the workshop include performing advanced searches in Google that afford more precise and useful results, accessing and generating maps in Google Maps and Earth and using them as instructional tools and linking to full text of articles in Google Scholar search results using the library's custom “find it at UMUC” links. Google Universe, running from August 3–10, will be an asynchronous workshop conducted through Web Tycho. For enrollment information, please see the Center for Teaching and Learning Web site.

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ILS Participates in National Library Week

Information and Library Services participated in National Library Week, celebrated April 12–18. The theme of this year's celebration, "Worlds Connect @ Your Library," was especially appropriate given the UMUC library's commitment to meeting the information needs of its worldwide community of users.

ILS celebrated National Library Week by creating a National Library Week Web page featuring videos of professors and students who reflected on the importance of the UMUC library in providing invaluable research assistance and resources. The participants spoke about the vast array of materials available through the library as well as the variety of services the library provides, such as course-related library instruction and its liaison program.

ILS thanks the professors and students whose efforts helped to make our participation in National Library Week a success!

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For Your Information...

McKeldin Library Office Hours

Research continues to be available to UMUC students, faculty, and staff in the ILS office in McKeldin Library, Room 6259. Normal hours are:

• Saturday: 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
• Sunday: Noon–8 p.m.

Need to find us? Please visit Locations and Hours for more information.

Appointments

An in-person appointment may be made to meet with an ILS librarian in the ILS library at the Student Faculty Services Center, at McKeldin library or at the Dorsey Station library. For those students and faculty members who do not live within the area, individual consultations with librarians are also available via telephone and through Web conferencing. To arrange an appointment, please complete the Request an Appointment form.

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Faculty Corner

New Restrictions for Harvard Business School Press Articles

Beginning in Summer 2009, articles from the publication Harvard Business Review found in the Business Source Complete database cannot be assigned to students as course material due to the publisher’s restrictions. Also affected are the Harvard Management Update and Harvard Management Communication Letter. Articles assigned from these journals must be purchased by the students though MBS Direct. Harvard Business School Press articles cannot be requested via E-Reserves or placed in Reserved Readings. To request an article from one of these publications for classroom use, place the request through your academic director or program director. UMUC librarians will be glad to assist you with locating similar materials from other publications that can be assigned to students as required readings; please Ask a Librarian for more information.

Library Liaisons

Information and Library Services provides library liaison services to UMUC faculty. We welcome the opportunity to work closely with faculty to provide tailored library services to individual classes, whether it be visiting your online or on-site class, assisting in adding information literacy components to specific course assignments or projects or providing handouts or online resources customized to your discipline or current course topic. Keep the liaison librarians in mind when you have library related questions, need extra help with research or need instruction on how to use our resources.

GSMT

• Julie Arnold
  GSMT: Information and Technology Systems, Teacher Education
  
  
• Cynthia Thomes
  GSMT: Business and Executive Programs; Management, Accounting, and Finance

SUS

• Barb Mann
  SUS: Department of Communication, Arts, and Humanities (COMM)
  
  
• Robert Miller
  SUS: Department of Social, Behavioral, Natural, and Mathematical Sciences (SCIP) and the Center for Student Success
  
  
• Ed O'Donnell
  SUS: Department of Business and Professional Programs (BAPP)
  
  
• Ryan Shepard
  SUS: Department of Computer Information Systems and Technology (CITE); areas that were formerly Department of Professional Practice: Criminal Justice, Fire  Science, Legal Studies (Note: These are now under BAPP, but Ryan Shepard still covers them.)

Instruction

As Summer 2009 begins, Information and Library Services librarians look forward to working with you and your classes, either via Web Tycho or on-site, in the provision of library resources instruction. The transferable skill building and concept understanding that librarians offer in these sessions provide both a deeper comprehension and comfort level for your students in locating, evaluating and using information relevant to their studies. This preparation and reinforcement will hold your students in good stead as they deal with the vast amount of available information during their academic careers and as productive employees and citizens. Please complete the Faculty Request for Library Instruction form to schedule one or more sessions for your classes.

Questions? Comments? Need more information? Please contact Barb Mann, Assistant Director for Public Services, or Information and Library Services.

We look forward to working with you!

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Hot Sites... Career and Job Search

In these tough economic times, it is critical for job seekers to know as much as they can about the job search process in order to maintain a competitive edge. These Web sites provide a wealth of information, whether you are new to the job market or are looking to make changes in your career. For more information and resources, please also see the library's Guide to Career and Job Search Resources.

Associations on the Net
Joining professional associations is a great way to network and keep abreast of current news and trends across a range of careers. Associations on the Net, sponsored by the Internet Public Library, provides a guide to the Web sites of a wide variety of professional associations and organizations, including such areas as Business and Economics, Education and Health and Medical Sciences.

Career Builder
CareerBuilder offers a vast online and print network to help job seekers connect with employers. CareerBuilder.com powers the career sites for more than 9,000 Web sites, including 140 newspapers and broadband portals such as MSN and AOL.

CareerOneStop: Resumes, Cover Letter, Interviews
CareerOneStop offers tips on writing effective cover letters and resumes, including samples and templates. The site also provides extensive information on handling the job interview process.

Monster
In this Web site, more than 75 million visitors have established personalized accounts that take advantage of Monster's wide breadth of services—including their global resume database and proprietary job search agent technology—which better enable job-seekers to manage their careers.

Occupational Outlook Handbook
For hundreds of different types of jobs—such as teacher, lawyer and nurse—the Occupational Outlook Handbook describes the training and education needed, earnings, expected job prospects, workers' duties and working conditions. In addition, the Handbook provides job search tips, links to information about the job market in each state and more.

USA Jobs
This United States Office of Personnel Management Web site is the Federal Government's official one-stop source for federal jobs and employment information.

The Washington Post
The employment Web site from the Washington, D.C.-metro area’s largest database of job posting listings sponsored by the area’s largest newspaper, The Washington Post.

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